


argumentum ad ignorantiam

by lanyon



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/pseuds/lanyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton excels at loss. Childhood, parents, dignity, virginity, his brother, peace of mind, his brother again, free will and Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	argumentum ad ignorantiam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [haipollai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/gifts).



> +For Sarah, who is wonderful, on the occasion of her birthday.  
> +Thanks to [screamlet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet) for the encouragement.

Clint Barton excels at loss. Childhood, parents, dignity, virginity, his brother, peace of mind, his brother again, free will and Phil Coulson. 

He has probably lost the respect of his colleagues and he has certainly lost their trust but he can’t shake off Natasha Romanov, not even if he cared to try. The intimate intricacies of their relationship are why they’re on the roof of a splintered Stark Tower with vodka and bourbon and gin. 

“It’s the house cocktail,” says Natasha with a bright and wicked smile. Two mouthfuls of vodka, washed down with gin and chased with bourbon. “James and I used to drink it in Paris.”

Clint doesn’t really know who James was, or who he is, apart from dead and gone, like all of the ashes of Natasha’s past. 

Clint is going to stick with SHIELD but Natasha already knew it. He has to make amends. He has to suffer for what he has done. He drains the last of the vodka and doesn’t mean to drop the bottle but it shatters when it hits the paving, blue glass shards flying everywhere. 

“Clean-up on Aisle 5,” Tony says, when he joins them, a bottle of champagne in either hand. “But I didn’t order self-sacrifice.” He elbows Clint in the side. “Or self-pity. Drink up.”

Steve and Bruce join them too, followed by Thor, and Tony’s delighted at all the biologically-designated drivers. 

“But you’re at home,” says Bruce. He and Steve stand, shoulder to shoulder, serum-right and serum-wrong and two good men, in spite and because of science.

“I do not know how to drive,” says Thor. He is confused.

“But you have a hammer,” says Clint, sagely.

“This is true, my friend. Now, why are we drinking?”

“You’re not drinking.” Clint knows he is being pedantic. He knows he is being petulant.

“But you are,” says Thor.

“And how,” says Bruce.

“I remember my first hangover,” says Steve because only Captain America could be nostalgic for pain. 

“Please tell me it was during Prohibition, Cap. Was it during Prohibition? Was there a speakeasy involved?” Tony’s eyes are wide and round and he aches to know that Captain America has broken the law. No such luck, of course.

“I was _fifteen_ when Prohibition ended,” says Steve. “Bucky was _ten_. He wasn’t a big drinker.”

Tony grumbles and raises one of the bottles of champagne to his lips. 

“JARVIS, hit the lights.” 

_Which lights, sir?_

“All of them. And put on some music. Something classy.”

Manhattan flickers around them, in a way it probably shouldn’t, and it flickers and blurs but it’s not burning so Clint keeps drinking.

.

The next morning, everyone is hungover, apart from the usual suspects. Tony might actually still be drunk. Clint mostly wants to die and it’s the sort of suffering he deserves. He is not like Steve, who has no concept of pain when it comes to a good cause, and he is not like Natasha, who keeps an accurate account of rights and wrongs and who knows all of her debts, intimately, like old friends and healing scars.

Clint goes back up to the roof and the paving and the glass shards splinter again beneath his booted feet. He’s not alone. 

“Cap,” he says, turning to go. Someone wants to be alone right now and Clint has no idea who that might be.

“No,” says Steve. “Stay.”

Steve will be earnest, Clint is sure, and he doesn’t think he has the stomach for sincerity this morning. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” says Steve, after a moment.

“If you’d read the reports, you’d know that’s not true,” says Clint and Steve looks startled, as though he’s been slapped. 

“You couldn’t have saved him,” says Steve. He’s speaking slowly and carefully, or even more carefully than usual. 

“I shouldn’t have killed him,” says Clint.

“You didn’t, Barton,” says Steve. He uses surnames when he’s trying to be authoritative. “It was war. He was a -”

“Don’t dare say he was a victim,” says Clint because it hurts that anyone could think that Phil Coulson was anything other than a hero.

“He was a good man,” says Steve, calmly, as though Clint has said nothing. “And he made his own choices. And - ” He pauses, his voice softer when he continues. “I never thought I’d have this conversation with anyone else.

Clint raises his head and Steve looks stricken. Bucky, of course. The boy who was ten when Prohibition ended and who featured on some of Phil’s trading cards, though they’re bloodstained now, and who died nearly seventy years ago. Clint claps Steve on the shoulder and Steve might talk like an old man, or an old-fashioned man, but he’s not even thirty yet and suddenly Clint feels old. 

He excuses himself and Bruce Banner’s lab is no place to hide but Bruce is a good man and a thoughtful man.

“I think I made Captain America cry,” he says. 

Bruce raises his eyebrows. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in all fifty states.”

“I think I killed Phil Coulson,” says Clint.

Bruce takes off his glasses. “No,” he says, as though anything is that simple. “Loki killed him, or maybe we all did but you had nothing to do with it.”

“Do you have an answer for everything?”

“Seldom, if ever,” says Bruce. “And certainly not if no actual question has been asked.”

“Can I ask your advice?”

Bruce frowns but he nods. “As long as I don’t have to follow it myself.”

Clint smiles and it doesn’t feel forced. “How can I live with what I’ve done?”

“We’re not a team because we’re good men,” says Bruce. “I wish I could tell you that you’ve nothing to live with but -” He shrugs. “I know how it goes, Clint. You want to take the blame for what your hands have done, even if your brain is-” He gestures, like a bird in flight, and Clint can’t imagine what it costs a man like Bruce to admit to it; to admit to such a loss of control. 

Clint perches on a counter-top, away from things that spill and spit and burn, and he doesn’t understand physics but he’s sure this isn’t it. This is Bruce’s curiosity which, combined with Tony Stark’s invention, has the potential to be remarkable.

“So, how do I make it up to Captain America?” he asks.

“For making him cry?” Bruce puts his glasses back on. “No, I have no idea.”

.

Clint takes Steve out to dinner. It’s not like that, no matter what Tony says, and it’s only a little like that, whatever Darcy implies. She tells him not to put out on a first date and Tony laughs and says that Cap’s not that kind of girl. 

They eat pizza in Brooklyn and Steve tells Clint about how he wants to buy a brownstone because it turns out he’s rich and he doesn’t always want to live in Manhattan. 

The Mansion gets lonely, he says, when everyone’s away. 

Clint supposes that it must be tiring, being the anchor. 

.

At SHIELD HQ, hardly anyone looks Clint in the eye. He looks, though, and he sees and he holds his chin up because Natasha says he must and Darcy, at least, smiles at him. 

“Fury wants to see you in his office,” she says. Fury always does.

.

“I’m sorry,” Clint says. “About before.” He gestures. “I keep forgetting-”

“That I’m not actually ninety-four?” asks Steve, with a rueful smile. He unwraps his hands and Clint pities the punching bag and Steve quirks a grin in the direction of the arrow-studded target at the far end of the decaying gym. 

“That it was so recent for you,” says Clint. “Coulson used to talk about you.” Now Clint is smiling. “It was part of the spiel, you know? First day on the job, there was a powerpoint presentation about what it is to be a member of SHIELD.” What it is to be a hero, he wants to say. “I got it, Nat got it. Hell, every new agent got it. You were his idol,” he says. “

Steve blushes. It’s oddly endearing. He rubs the back of his neck and he is bashfulness personified and anyone can see who cares to look as Clint cups Steve’s impossibly chiselled jaw. He’s a little distracted by the sensation of stubble beneath his callused fingertips. 

“I was never your idol, was I?” 

Clint shakes his head and his thumb touches Steve’s lower lip, rubbing along it. 

“Tony warned me about men like you,” says Steve, his eyes wide. 

“Iron Man was kind of my hero,” says Clint, earning a strangled laugh from Steve. “Coulson hated that.”

“You miss him,” says Steve, like the gaping hole in Clint’s life is anything but obvious and bleeding at the edges. “Did you ever-”

Clint shakes his head again. “Always thought we had time.”

Steve lets out another huffing sound that might be a laugh but Clint could never imagine something so cynical emerging from the lips of Captain America. “Tell me about it,” Steve says, softly. 

And, the thing is, Clint could tell him about all the missed chances and moments that were not moments but he has never been a fan of stating the obvious.

. 

“What would Coulson say?” asks Natasha, the following morning. 

Clint stares at her. Her ability to acquire information is unparalleled, rivalled only by Darcy’s ability to disseminate information. 

“Fury wants to see you in his office,” says Darcy and she looks at Clint speculatively and Clint doesn’t like it one bit. 

.

There’s a moment on the refitted Helicarrier. Clint thinks that maybe they live in a goddamned cartoon world and there’ll be Hulk-shaped holes in the bulkhead still but everything is gleaming and there’s nothing a lick of paint can’t fix. 

There’s a moment in the utilitarian sleeping quarters and Clint’s face is pressed against the curve of Steve’s neck and he is biting down hard and swallowing down a dry, heaving sob. 

.

“You can’t make Captain America play strip poker, Darcy.”

“Who’s making who do what now?”

“No, I mean. It’s completely wrong. It’s like a gateway drug to hedonism.”

“You’d know, Barton. You would know.” 

“Oh my _god_. You can’t make Captain America play strip poker with Captain America trading cards.” 

.

“Fury wants to see you in his office now.”

“What’s new?” 

“No, seriously.” Darcy _looks_ serious, for once, and Clint casts a last mournful look at his breakfast before he breaks into a jog. 

Everyone is there when he arrives. Fury’s office is not that big and Steve is standing like a soldier and Thor is lounging like a god and Bruce and Tony and Natasha fill the spaces in between.

Darcy slips into the room after Clint and the door is closed. 

The door is closed but everyone on the floor can probably hear Clint’s snarl of inarticulate rage, drowned out by Tony’s shouting. 

.

Phil Coulson is alive. Clint wonders whose blood stains the trading cards. 

.

“So, what, the sceptre has different settings?” Tony gesticulates wildly. They are in Bruce’s lab. Tony starts counting on his fingers. “There’s the brainwash setting, the thoracotomy setting, the portal setting, the spin-cycle, the-”

Bruce closes his hand on Tony’s fingers. Clint pushes the heels of his own hands into his eyes and he’s seeing stars. 

“When can we see him?” he asks. He doesn’t meet Steve’s gaze though he knows that Steve is looking at him, warm and comforting and incurably optimistic. 

“Tomorrow,” says Natasha. “He’s being moved to SHIELD in the morning.”

Clint can look at her but she has always been that kind of flame and he has always been that kind of moth. He nods. 

“I need a drink,” says Tony. He claps Steve on the shoulder. “C’mon, old-timer. Let’s go see if there’s a ball game on the wireless for you.” 

.

“I can’t tell him,” says Clint. He’s looking at Steve now but that’s the beauty of tequila. “I can’t tell him I slept with his motherfucking childhood hero when I was trying to get over him.”

Steve looks pained. Maybe it’s the swearing but Steve was in the Army, in the Second World War, when men were men and expletives were just another language. “Then don’t tell him.” Steve smiles or, at least, that’s what Clint thinks Steve’s expression is. “You’ve got this chance, Barton,” he says. “Take it.”

Clint laughs. It sticks in his throat. “And say what? Glad you’re not dead, Phil, even if Fury is a lying liar who lies. Wanna fuck?” 

“Maybe work on the wording a bit,” says Steve and, oh god, he’s definitely smiling now. “I’d - if I’d the chance to tell - Look. Just. Go to him. Tell him how you feel.”

Clint looks down at his feet for the longest time. He hasn’t cleaned his boots since before Stuttgart. He can feel his lips twitch. “Are you breaking up with me, Cap?” 

Steve shrugs. “It’s not often you get a do-over, Barton.”

.

“What’s with Agent’s new shadow?” asks Tony.

Clint ignores him. 

“No, seriously. Never had you down for some sort of ministering angel, Katniss.”

Steve rubs his temples. Darcy hands him a tablet with the appropriate Wikipedia page highlighted.  
.

“We have a mission for you,” says Phil. His complexion isn’t so grey and he’s carrying a fetching cane and Clint reckons it’s some kind of gun but Tony’s not admitting to anything. 

Steve looks up and he’s hopeful and smiling and every good thing and if a rash of heat spreads across the back of Clint’s neck, at least no one is standing behind him. 

Phil distributes the file folders and Natasha inhales sharply. Clint’s briefly distracted by Phil’s fingertips on his knuckles, which is the kind of promise he’s beginning to understand. 

“Operation Leningrad,” says Phil, “is a mission to disarm and retrieve the Winter Soldier. The latest pictures are at the back of the file, from security footage in Vladivostok.”

There’s rustling as everyone turns their pages and muttering as Tony complains about how old-fashioned paper is and no one ever gets a paper-cut from a tablet. Clint looks away from Phil’s hands long enough to see a strange expression cross Steve’s face, giving way to a smile that’s beatific, even by Steve’s standards. 

“What’s so funny, Cap?” asks Tony, scowling at the offending pages. 

Steve’s gaze meets Clint’s briefly. “We’re bringing this guy in from the cold, Stark,” he says. “It’s a do-over.”

“Yeah, that means nothing to me.”

.

It means a little more to everyone when Bucky Barnes opens the Winter Soldier’s eyes and Steve is all radiance. Clint has no idea how it works, with Natasha and everything, but Steve’s not using punching bags anymore and the sparring matches between Captain America and the Winter Soldier become legendary.

Once, Clint passes Barnes in the corridor and Barnes’ smile is terrifyingly bright and utterly charming and he says, “I know I don’t have to tell you to keep your hands to yourself, Hawkeye.” 

Clint tips his head back and laughs. “You’re not my type, Barnes.”

“No,” says Barnes, flashing his teeth again. “We’re both suckers for the good guys, huh?” 

.

Sometimes, Clint Barton excels at the unexpected.


End file.
